When Goodman Realty Group’s new 207-unit apartment complex at Winrock Town Center in Uptown opens in early 2026, it will sport new technology to seamlessly convert the building into a rotating mix of overnight, short-term and long-term rental units.
That technology — created by the East Coast company Placemakr — allows multifamily developments to simultaneously operate as flexible-use hospitality establishments alongside long-term apartment leases. The technology can help developers expand local options for transient individuals or businesses seeking overnight and short-term rentals, while also increasing the earnings potential for multifamily complexes, said Goodman Realty President Scott Goodman.
Goodman Realty, the developer behind Winrock Town Center, expects an 18-month construction window for the apartment complex, with groundbreaking expected in late fall. And when it opens, it will be the first multifamily facility in New Mexico to use the Placemakr technology, which is currently deployed at properties on the East and West coasts, and in Texas and Florida.
Apart from becoming a Placemakr customer, Goodman is now also an investor in the company through Albuquerque-based GOS Capital, a boutique investment firm that Goodman launched in fall 2021. GOS pools capital from individual investors for early-stage, Angel-type investments.
GOS committed $250,000 to 10 local startups in 2021 and 2022 from its first fund, which included about a dozen investors. Then, in January, Goodman began raising a second, $1 million fund, leading to a first close in late March on an initial $300,000 tranche of capital from about half the investors who participated in the first GOS fund.
“About half the investors in Fund 1 decided to re-invest in the new fund, which shows real confidence and faith in my investment strategy,” Goodman told the Journal. “I’m now raising money with new, high net-worth investors and expect to close on a second $300,000 tranche in August. After that, I’ll reach out to institutional investors, such as endowments and family trusts, to raise the full $1 million goal by the end of the year.”
Unlike Fund 1, which focused on small seed investments in local startups in general, Fund II is specifically targeting companies with compelling innovations in property technology, or “PropTech,” which refers to products and services directly linked to real estate development and management.
That’s a unique strategy among venture platforms operating in New Mexico, and an ideal strategy for GOS Capital that allows Goodman to combine GOS equity investments of up to $100,000 with Goodman Realty Group’s own development efforts.
That’s led to four Fund II PropTech commitments to date, starting early this year with investments in New York-based Cuby Technologies Inc. and New Jersey-based Piñata.
Cuby has built a compact, transportable factory for onsite residential construction projects to speed development and lower costs, while Piñata is marketing a first-of-its-kind rent-rewards platform that confers redeemable points to renters when they pay their rent on time.
Goodman Realty will deploy both technologies in its own projects, applying Cuby’s onsite factory at a new housing development in Taos, and Piñata technology at existing and future Goodman properties.
The Placemakr technology will debut at the Windrock apartments, turning that development from the moment it opens into a mixed-use hospitality and long-term rental venue, Goodman said.
The Placemakr platform is based on a algorithm that automatically plans rental strategies for units around seasonal swings in market demand, such as reserving apartments for nightly or weekly rentals during the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in early October. Or, during the end-of-year shopping season, it could reserve a suite of apartments for one or two months to provide temporary housing for out-of-town workers who businesses hire during the holidays.
“Placemakr outlines the most-optimal rental-and-revenue schedule for the building,” Goodman said. “It creates a timeline where long-term leases are scheduled to expire, say, at the end of September to provide some short-term rentals for the Ballon Fiesta and for the end-of-year holidays. It manipulates things back and forth to always have availability.”
GOS made a fourth PropTech investment as well in Chicago-based Obie, a startup with a new software platform that facilitates customized home insurance packages that offer discounts based on a homeowner’s history.
“It’s like today’s discounts on car insurance based on a person’s driving score, but in this case, it creates a home insurance score,” Goodman said. “The software pulls data on individuals to offer homeowners with good safety records discounted quotes for things like regular maintenance scheduling, a low number of insurance claims or having a stable, long-term job.”
GOS’s new PropTech focus enticed some Fund I investors to commit money to Fund II, such as Erik Strobert, founder and CEO of Albuquerque-based Perspective Components Inc., which has created smart camera and microphone technology for security surveillance.
“Scott is approaching venture capital in a different way than other local venture investors,” Strobert told the Journal. “It’s an aggressive and innovative boutique-scale focus that’s now combining his core competency in the real estate world with venture investing.”
Real estate developer Rahim Kassam of Fundero Development Inc. said PropTech investing also encouraged him to commit money to GOS Capital.
“I want to incorporate some of those PropTech innovations into my own work as a developer,” Kassam told the Journal.
Goodman’s fund-management style may also appeal to investors, such as forgoing any management fees for running GOS Capital.
“I have no salary,” Goodman said. “Unlike the 2% or 3% management fees charged by big funds, I won’t make money unless my investors make money, because my compensation is completely tied to fund performance. If I don’t provide returns to investors, I won’t make a penny.”
